reat. I think Doloria realized that
anything might be about to happen, for she laid the other rifle in
position on the parapet, rather casually asking:

"Will it matter if I stand on the canteens? They raise me just high
enough!"

Why should she not be given a chance to fight for her life--at least,
until they located our point of concealment and began to concentrate
their fire on it. That this would inevitably happen might be a matter of
minutes, but until then I thought she had every right to stay. There's
no denying, too, that I knew her value.

What was going on behind the wall of racing flame we could not tell. But
now it rose majestically, leapt skyward and sank to insignificance. The
back-fire had met our own; they had gripped, flared up, and died.
Likewise were our forces about to clash, and perhaps burn out with the
heat of human passion.

Staring through the smoke we counted seven men running to the rear. They
well enough knew the danger of being without cover, and were intending
first to get beyond our range and then bring the fight back by some
other means. Shooting fast I heard Doloria give several quick gasps of
excitement as I knocked up the ash dust close to them, and although,
their number was not reduced we gained a feeling of greater security to
find the fort more impregnable than I had prophesied.

But our budding hope lasted about as long as it took us to conceive it.
One of the fellows suddenly changed his direction, waving as he ran, and
the others dashed after him. Then we, too, saw the discovery he had
made, and it filled me with a sense of desperation.

This was a long, low line of green, indicating a ditch, or slough, edged
with saw-palmettoes and bay bushes, that began at some indefinite
northwestward point and diagonally crossed the prairie until it passed
around our Oasis scarcely more than a hundred feet away. Heretofore,
completely hidden by the tall grass, I had had no idea of its existence,
and neither had the men, until Doloria's torch changed the prairie to a
charred waste. In reality it was the outlet from our spring, and I knew
that it must be fairly wide because the fire had not jumped it.

To Efaw Kotee's band it offered both an immediate cover and a place from
which to carry on the fight; moreover, by following it toward us, they
could reach the Oasis and eventually creep up behind so near that a
well-directed shot in my head would be only a question of persistence
and ti